Saturday, September 15, 2007

Slow & Steady

Well it took WAY longer than I guessed (or hoped), but the slot cutting is complete! It took Wednesday afternoon, all day Thursday and Friday, and a little into Saturday morning... But its done and looks pretty good - though not pretty.



The process was painful, after laying it out we made kerf cuts with the circular saw, then knocked those out with a hammer and chisel, then cleaned up the slots with a router mounted on a handmade jig... Let's hope its in the right spot!!!

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

And we begin...

After we gathered our thoughts, had a bagel, and got the leftover trash loaded in the dumpster, we started on tackling the process of cutting a "slot" in the log walls. Angie calls this task "hacking the house". There is really no easy way to do this, but we need a flat place to attach the new room. After measuring twice (okay three, four, or five times) we attached a straight edge to the wall and made some kerf cuts in the logs with the circular saw.



After we knocked the pieces out with a hammer we have a rough looking slot. After some fine-tuning with a hammer and chisel (and maybe the belt sander) we'll be ready to attach a post.





Tomorrow there is a lot more of this...

Delivery Day

The truck with materials was here before 7am this morning. The driver backed the rig right to the garage doors and the unloading began... Two hours later the garage was full! While the trusty construction manager (Angie) took inventory, Mike, Ken, and I did the hauling, carrying, and lifting. What did we get ourselves into?!?!





Sunday, September 9, 2007

We have a sub floor!

Today was about finishing the sub floor, installing the what Randy calls a "rim joist" (In my terms a long, heavy pressure treated board) that I got to hang over the edge of the deck to hold up while he installed the first couple of nails, there were 3 of those. I also had the privilege of driving in nails all on my own! Yes, he trusts me with a hammer!!!



Next we finished the sub floor which gives a good visual of the size of the room. I have a new appreciation for anyone that uses a drill on a regular basis. That thing gets hot and for a little hand like mine is huge when putting screws into sub floor, yes Randy actually let me use HIS drill to put in screws while he worked on other stuff.



We had planned to start on the framing for the "cappuccino deck" (the term the architect coined) but ran into a snafu. The posts that are down below are not in the right place, so 2 will have to be replaced. Since we couldn't do that we worked on loading up the dumpster that we had delivered with all the stuff out of the garage, under the deck and remaining deck scraps. It made a big difference in the garage (making room for the delivery on Wednesday).

*On a side note I found a lovely snake skin, about 4 1/2' or 5' long wrapped around Randy's tool box!

Stay tuned, next update will be Wednesday, the delivery and possible the cutting of the logs!